Remembering
by jayjaybee
Summary: Patsy remembers. Patsy/Delia.


You used to tease me, sometimes, that I couldn't remember the moment we first met.

* * *

You'd seen me in the canteen while you were on a three-week secondment to the London a short while before you moved there permanently. "Something about you caught my eye," you'd tell me, a long time later, but when I asked what, you just grinned. "I'm not telling you all my secrets, Pats. Suffice it to say, I saw you, and I remembered you."

But it wasn't until a week or so later that we first met - according to your version of events, though that's the only version we have to go by. I have no memory of it.

And as your story goes, you were accompanying a patient up from the casualty ward, a young lad in a motorbike accident, smashed up in umpteen different ways, needing stitching together left, right, centre and more.

I do remember him.

But I can't remember you.

You brought him up, handed over his papers to me, and then left.

That's the short version.

Short is an important word in your telling of the story: I was short with you that day, you'd tell me later. Rude, abrupt, unpleasant, brusque, brutal, scathing, insulting, disrespectful, unmannerly, loutish, insolent, uncouth, uncivilised, ungracious, surly, boorish, uncivil, you'd say, before I'd cut you off and ask if you'd swallowed a thesaurus.

Then you'd start on the long version:

You'd brought him up because the poor lad was terrified, and because you were new and curious and wanted to see some more of the hospital beyond the casualty ward. And what you'd found, was me - and how: snatching the papers from your hand with a curt brush-off, a stiff "Thank you Nurse," a harumph and barely a glance in your direction, and, when you lingered, an angry "And that will be all."

In another telling of the story, you'd say I was too distracted to notice you because I was chastising a poor old man who was about to rupture his stitches back into bed. Or that I was up to my elbows in bleach and disinfectant, or busy with a mop and bucket, or with a bedpan or a syringe. In another version, you'd say I was too preoccupied with paperwork, or swatting flies, or dozing over endless forms, or eating a pork pie or a sausage roll or a satsuma, or reading a smutty novel, or struggling over the crossword.

In your stories of that first meeting, I was always doing any or all of the above, and much more, and when your embroidering of the story began to get too much, I'd say "Delia, that's not how it happened at all," and you'd smirk and say "How do you know? You don't remember it," as if that was the clincher to the argument. And then you'd kiss me.

Your embellishments to the story were charming, really, but the truth was that I'd just not noticed you that day, and I'd been short with you because that's how I was with everyone that summer. Efficient, precise, abrupt. Giving just this much and no more, to patients, to colleagues, to friends. And so, though I couldn't remember it, I knew how I'd been towards you.

When you told the story - when you told me, half-lying on me, your palm on my chest, my heart beating underneath, that "that day I thought you were the last person I'd ever fall in love with, even if you were heart-stoppingly pretty" - even as I marvelled at my good fortune, I shuddered at the uncomfortable truth behind it: I'd built walls a mile high to keep everyone out, and those walls put people off. But, somehow, not you. While the walls remained solidly in place, you'd found a door, or a window. You'd found a way in and had made yourself at home.

When you told that story - however you told it, and seldom the same way twice - you laughed, and I laughed because that could have been it for us, but it wasn't, and I was so thankful and relieved to have been found by you.

* * *

Though I can't remember that first meeting I can remember the second, but that wasn't particularly auspicious, either.

It must have been a month or so after you'd moved to the London permanently, and it was a night out, a big crowd from the Nurses' Home, and you'd been introduced to me as one new girl amongst many. A fleeting glimpse, a flash of a dazzling smile, and then you were gone, and while we were all dancing, you were preoccupied with someone else. Arguing, in fact, or rather an angry exchange in muttered whispers that became raised voices, then a stomping off, a slammed door, and you left standing there, stunned.

Later, as you stood miserably by the bar and I was taking a breather, I offered to buy you a drink.

You declined. You said you were tired, and you left.

"Well, the last time you'd spoken to me," you'd say, months later, as we lay, limbs tangled together on your narrow bed, "you'd been downright rude to me. An absolute beast. I was already battered and bruised, and I don't think I could've taken a going over from you as well."

"I wouldn't - "

"I didn't know that. You were a complete stranger to me then." You kissed my neck, and murmured into it. "Strange thought that, you a stranger."

On another occasion, sitting by a campfire in the fading light of early evening, heads close, hands twined together, you'd tell it differently. "You were exactly the person I wanted to see right then," you'd say, "exactly the person I wanted to turn to for comfort. I'd seen you around and I - But I couldn't. I didn't want you to be caught up in the aftermath of that particular godawful mess. I didn't want you to be implicated in the fallout, or to carry the taint of rebound."

"Remarkable restraint," I'd say, stroking the back of your hand.

You just shook your head. "I thought, perhaps, you might be worth waiting for."

"Or, perhaps, that I was awful beast without a civil tongue in my head."

"Never that. Really, Pats, never that."

That evening when I offered to buy you a drink, I don't think I had a plan. There was no particular intent behind the question. You just looked so unhappy and I wanted to cheer you up. I thought nothing more of it when you left that evening, except to notice how pretty you were, and to wonder how I hadn't seen you around. I'd been in a particular, peculiar funk of my own for months. I was miserable with work, I was miserable with myself. Even more so than usually, I'd closed in on myself, blocking out the world around me. That's the only way I can explain it, the only reason I can give for not having spotted you before, for being so rude to you that day on the ward so many months earlier.

Once I had noticed you, though, I spotted you quite frequently. God, you were something to watch. Determined, irreverent, fearless, kind. And your smile - nothing less than a blessing in the form of a facial gesture. My days were brighter when I caught sight of you, as I passed the Orthopaedic ward where I'd discovered you now worked, or as you supervised a transfer to Men's Surgery or I brought one to your ward, or, one heart-stopping moment in the scrub room, as the green-suited figure who bustled in from the other theatre and started disrobing alongside me revealed herself to be you, leaving me catching my breath at your vigorous efficiency and your smile.

And that's how it was for a month or two, until one evening and another night out. The same place as before, but this time it was me looking miserable and propping up the bar after an afternoon of hell in theatre with Mr. Tracey and a ruptured spleen.

I'd not wanted to go out: I'd wanted to stay at home, drown my sorrows with a glass of scotch or two, a bath and a pulpy novel. But the importuning of colleagues was such that there I was, watching others have fun and feeling the miserable funk seeping back over me.

And then you were by my side, offering to buy me a drink.

I was about to decline, I was about to make an excuse, to say I was tired, and leave. But you tilted your head to one side, a challenge in your eyes, a grin hovering around your lips.

And so I said yes.

And that was it. That was us, from that point onwards.

* * *

That was us, until - until - until _what happened_ that afternoon.

And so I'm a stranger to you again. I have to remember all of this for both of us now.

Perhaps, one day, I'll be able to tell you this story.

Perhaps.


End file.
